In a bid to cure the deadly AIDS virus, scientists have made an unexpected discovery - that a drug used to combat alcoholism can actually awaken and eliminate dormant HIV virus lurking in the body.

Antabuse, generically sold as disulfiram, was able to eliminate HIV-causing virus without any reported adverse effects in up to the 30 patients with HIV tested in America and Australia. "This clearly demonstrates that disulfiram is not toxic and is safe to use, and could quite possibly be the game changer we need," said lead author and University of Melbourne professor Sharon Lewin.

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In patients undergoing antiretroviral therapy (ART) with AIDS drugs, virus can escape medications by hiding in certain cells, and once the treatment is discontinues, they begin invading the host again.

The study found out that there is a reactivation of dormant HIV occurs when treatment was administered at the highest tolerable dose. "The next step is to get these cells to die," said Julian Elliott from the department of infectious diseases at The Alfred in Melbourne, Australia.

One of the toughest hindrances in finding a cure for the virus is the latency stage where the virus stays dormant in hosts undergoing ART. According to the United Nations HIV Program UNAIDS, since the 1980s, HIV/AIDS has accounted for more than 34 million death. An estimated 2 million people are diagnosed every year.

"The dosage of disulfiram we used provided more of a tickle than a kick to the virus, but this could be enough. Even though the drug was only given for three days, we saw a clear increase in [the] virus in [the] plasma, which was very encouraging," Lewin said.

Tagsalcholism, HIV Cure, HIV, hiv aids, antiretroviral therapy, antabuse, disulfiram, rehabilitation, medicine, discovery, Science, Drugs, medications, Anti-Alcoholism Drug HIV Virus